Wednesday, 9 December 2009

Phew what a great time I have had - spreading my birthday out for as long as I can!
Monday we went to my oldest son - and was surprised with the most fantastic meal - he is a great cook - and it was great to all be together to celebrate. Sadly my younger sons girlfriend was too ill to come - she has been struck with swine flu. Get better soon 'M'.

I have more lovely pressies, and Haruko made me a gorgeous rich chocolate cake - with candles - and 60 on it too. And they sang 'Happy Birthday' and I got to blow out the candles. This is the first time in my entire life that I have had a birthday cake, and now I know how good it feels - brilliant! (A bir ironic as I used to make cakes for everyone - birthdays, weddings, etc you name it I made one!)

Yesterday I went to Olney to LB Crafts for a workshop - Mixed Media Jewellery inspired by Tim Holtz

We made three pendants.

This is the reverse of the first one. Inside is a square of card, coloured and stamped and sprayed with copper shimmer.

This is the front using the same method, but it's hard to see the shimmer spray. It started off as a little silver frame, (which I coloured with alcohol inks,) into which we sandwiched a piece of card (which we stamped and inked) with two pieces of glass. Then finished it off with the clock parts, and the metal 'roof'.

Now that I have mine home, I think I will replace the stamped image with something different - its nice to experiment. All the pieces turned out differently on the course - and it was lovely to see the different colours and interpretations.

For this next pendant we all had a copper 1 inch frame. A piece of copper, a mould, and a piece of copper wire. The finished pendant was achieved by moulding the piece of copper, cutting it out, staining it if you wanted too - which I did, and I gave it a spritz of gold glimmer spray - all these glitzy things are hard to photograph sadly. I am going to finish this off by sealing it with Diamond Glaze and perhaps adding a little jewel.

I am really rather proud of this last piece.

I decided to totally go 'wild' and change the colouring of it. I used rust, copper, blue, and a few other colours to make it something that will go with any outfit - and it looked great with what I was wearing on the day. Rich and wintery and warm.

I am 'hungry' to make more of these with different photos or images, and colours. I am going to use alcohol inks to colour the little gold adornments I made either side - to tone in with the over all 'rustic' and old look, and the green beads I will alter with alcohol inks too to make them look a amethyst colour perhaps with some copper.

This looks so much better in natural light and in one's hand and it really catches the light with the alcohol inks.

It is finished off with disc and key.

I have bought some more frames, essential bits to construct more of these, but the discs, and keys, and the 'clock works' all come in separate packs containing far more that I need and cost a fortune, so I will have to improvise somehow - which adds to the fun.

We arrived home last night - tired but happy - and thank you to all those on the course with me, I had such a wonderful time.